Binary Witness (The Amy Lane Mysteries) (8 page)

Chapter Seventeen: Our House

As he parked on Melody’s street, Jason felt a tad uneasy. Eavesdropping on a couple of bar-backs was a world away from knocking on somebody’s door and interrogating them about their dead friend. Did he have the balls for this? Did he want to risk going back to prison? Fuck no. He’d thought he was a tough man, swaggering down the street with his boys. If prison had taught him one thing, it was that he’d been nothing but a child before lock-up.

Yet, if he was out here and did nothing, what was the point of it all? Two girls were dead and he could help out. Maybe he would have to take a risk to do that. And if that meant bending the law, playing the cop, or finding his way back around the street, he could do that. He could do that if it meant no one else had to die.

The morning had turned up jack shit, kicking around the docks, looking for information on the river and the barrage. Most of the guys had been secretive, distrustful of a boy from Bute, and the rest had been foreign and unable—or unwilling—to talk. So he’d decided to try a different tack, and Melody’s former housemates were as good a place as any to start.

With a deep breath, Jason got out the car and started down the street. Number 22 with the blue door—but the door was open and there were a pile of boxes and carrier bags on the pavement. A couple of lads were sitting on the wall outside with beer in hand, as a knockout brunette in a T-shirt dress and leggings stumbled out with her arms full of kitchenware. “Little help, guys?”

The guys in question just laughed and she poked her tongue out at them. But her high-heeled Converse slid on the edge of the kerb and her saucepans went flying.

Jason seized his chance. “Here, let me get those.” He gathered up the scattered pans and held them out to her.

She glanced down at her full arms. “Um...”

“Just show me where you need them,” he said, catching the guys nudging each other out of the corner of his eye. The girl nodded her head towards a car a few feet away, boot open and half-filled with cardboard boxes. Jason obediently followed and watched her shove the kettle and toastie maker in the gaps between boxes, before taking the saucepans off him one at a time and balancing them among the scented candles and stuffed toys.

“I know it’s a bit of a mess,” she said, as the last saucepan found a home on top of a lampshade, “but I’m not going too far with it.”

Jason held up his now-empty hands. “I’m not judging. Moving?”

The girl flicked an errant strand of chestnut hair out of her eyes. “Yeah, the house has...memories, I guess. I’m moving into a flat over in Roath. The nice end, not the dodgy end.”

“Roath’s nice,” he said, struggling to keep the conversation going. “By the park?”

“By the rec. It’s not much, but it’s my own, y’know?” She started walking back towards the house and he strolled alongside her, affecting his best “listening” face.

The guys on the wall kept a steady eye on him and, as they approached, one said loudly, “Oi, Teresa! We’re going down the pub. You can manage here, right?”

“Ryan, I’ve got a tonne more stuff!” she said, throwing up her hands.

Ryan looked pointedly at Jason. “Get your new man to help you then.”

“He’s not my...” Teresa looked over at Jason, cheeks heating with embarrassment. “Ignore them. They’re my idiot housemates—soon to be ex-housemates.” But she didn’t look pleased about that, her lip jutting out and quivering, and Jason guessed that the memories she’d mentioned were of good times past with these boys—and with Melody. “Of course you don’t have to help. You were obviously headed somewhere and it was great of you to catch the pots.”

With the guys heading off down the street, Jason shrugged. “I’ve nowhere to be for an hour. If you need a hand...”

He left the offer open, realising it was odd for a stranger to offer assistance clearing out a house, but he sensed that she liked him, her eyes drawn to the way his T-shirt stretched over his biceps, and he thought that investigating murders might actually be a lot of fun.

“Yeah,” she said, “I could use a good pair of arms.”

* * *

With her room tidied away into boxes and loaded into the car, Teresa boiled some water in a milk pan to make them both tea.

“The guys will never get round to buying a kettle,” she said, carefully pouring the water into mugs. “Mel was always—” She stopped herself, took a breath, and continued. “Melody was the organised one.”

Jason tried not to react to what she was saying, stirring sugar into his tea. “Was Melody an old housemate?” he said, voice carefully neutral.

Teresa sat in the chair across from him, suddenly fragile with her long fingers wrapped around the chipped china mug. “She’s...she’s the girl. On the news. The one who died.”

Her eyes were pained—and green-hazel, like Amy’s. She carried the same haunted look about her, wearing her hurt like a shroud.

“I’m sorry. God, that’s so fucked up. The pictures...”

She smiled tearfully. “She was a good friend. I want to remember her like she was...not like that picture of her. She’s too still to be Melody.” She looked away and Jason felt like a tosser for bringing the woman to cry like that, unsuspecting of his motives in seeking her out. But that was what he was here for—to help catch Melody’s killer.

“Have the police found any leads?” he asked, sure that was a reasonable question from a concerned stranger.

Teresa shook her head, taking a sip of tea. “Nothing. They think it’s related to that other girl, but they’re not sure. She didn’t know her—I don’t know her, neither do John or Ryan.”

“It must be worse, not knowing what happened.” He felt genuinely bad for Teresa. It must be awful to have your friend die, but to have them murdered and not know who did it, not have a body and funeral? He couldn’t imagine how that must feel.

“She was just out with some people from the bakery.” Teresa gestured with her hand as if trying to work through what happened, but with a tone that suggested she’d already replayed this in her head many times. “She wasn’t going to stay out, because she had a piece of coursework due in Monday. She said she’d be home by midnight, but she always said that.” Teresa smiled through her tears. “Melody loved to party. So, we just went to bed, and the next day she still wasn’t back. We called her phone and the friends she was with, but they said she left them at twelve. That’s when we called the police. With that other girl being missing, they got serious about it straightaway. Then her dad came round here, shouting and calling us things, telling us we shouldn’t have let her go out alone.”

Teresa shook with the memory and Jason felt helpless. She looked up at him, swiping viciously at her eyes and running mascara.

“God, I’m sorry,” she said, reaching for the kitchen roll to dab at her eyes. “You’ve helped me out and I’ve just blubbed all over you.”

“It’s all right, Teresa,” he said softly. “Anything you need.”

“I’ll make it up to you. I’m having a little flat-warming thing tomorrow—you should come. Bring...your girlfriend.”

Jason recognised a water-testing exercise when he saw one. “I don’t really have anyone, but I would love to come. I’d like to...get to know you.”

She smiled at him and wrote down her number and her new address, pressed it into his hand with a shy smile.

Teresa waved him off at the door and Jason got back into his car, the little piece of paper safely folded into his jeans pocket. If this was being a detective, he could definitely live with that.

Chapter Eighteen: Sunday Morning Coming Down

It had been a miserable Saturday.

Amy huddled on the sofa as the light of Sunday morning filtered through the gaps in her blackout curtains. Despite managing for years without Jason, she now found the flat oddly cold, and the tea remained unmade. She hadn’t had anyone in the house except Bryn and Owain for almost five years now, and they only came when they needed something. She had never called them, never reached out. This was business. She tried not to kid herself that it was anything else.

Before that, there had been Lizzie. Her big sister had always taken care of her, since before their parents abandoned them, but Lizzie had to follow her dreams. And her dreams took her to Australia.

Amy guessed she had Lizzie to thank for Jason’s appearance at her flat. Her sister worried about her, whether she was eating and keeping the place tidy. That was what sisters did. Amy, in turn, worried about whether Lizzie had picked up a long-haired loser boyfriend of the kind found on
Neighbours
or whether she was going to die from the bite of an exotic snake. Amy had always tried to get Lizzie to stay in and Lizzie attempted to drag Amy outside, and that struggle had persisted even as Lizzie took her taxi to the airport and Amy couldn’t cross the threshold to wave goodbye.

Amy’s imagination conjured up one thousand ways to die in Australia. It was a rational fear—anything could happen to her on the other side of the world. Of course, anything could happen outside their front door, as these murders proved. Amy stood by her decision to stay where it was safe, and she had lost her sister because of her conviction. Some days, she wished she could be the kind of girl who followed her sister across the world, but she couldn’t even follow her out the front door.

Usually, when she had something to investigate, Amy didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. It was all caffeine and chocolate, a rush of adrenaline until she collapsed in a heap, physically and mentally drained, or she got caught by a black mood and couldn’t shift from her bed. Or a panic attack got hold of her and ruined the whole day, but she mostly had those under control. There was nothing to panic about if she didn’t open the front door. The house was safe and there were sensors and cameras on every potential entry point. She’d wired them herself.

AEON chirruped happily. Amy prised herself off the sofa to see what her beloved computer had found. The data from the supposedly secure transaction site had returned—she now had a list of everyone who had bought tickets for the last Crash and Yearn gig in Cardiff. Settling into her office chair, Amy filtered the results into her custom database and cross-referenced it with employee data from the Heath hospital by name and address fields. It was impossible to be sure who had made that call, but this would at least give them a sensible place to start.

Coupled with the information about the alarm, they might be able to narrow down their list to a handful of people, perhaps even one or two, and that was as good as a neon sign pointing down at the woman in Amy’s book.

However, the search would take a couple of hours to run, and until then there was nothing to do except bemoan the fact that it was Sunday morning and Jason wouldn’t be over for another 27.5 hours.

Amy sighed. “Screw you, Sunday,” she declared to the empty flat. AEON beeped in agreement.

* * *

She wasn’t returning his calls.

He tried to ring her every day but most of the time they wouldn’t put him through, told him that they didn’t let just any call through. He tried to tell them he was her lover, but they hung up on him nine times out of ten. When he did get through, the men on the other end would tell him she wasn’t there and she didn’t want to speak to him. The women would promise to give her a message, but the whores always lied. If they’d passed on his messages, she would’ve called him back.

But she must’ve got his other messages, even though the stupid moderators had taken them down. He knew she always liked to check the forum at that time, had watched her username pop up at the bottom of the page, revelling in the sense that they were together in that moment, occupying the same warm space.

He just had to be patient. He didn’t want to chase this new girl, but she wasn’t leaving him any choice. If she wasn’t jealous enough to come back to him, she’d need more persuading.

She left him no option but to pursue the girl. She brought this on herself. It was her fault that he had to be so cruel to her, to drive her mad with envy. She was to blame for those two beautiful girls at the bottom of the lake. She’d driven him to it.

She had to return his calls, or she had to face the consequences.

Chapter Nineteen: Mama Told Me Not to Come

Teresa texted to say that people were coming for nine, so Jason turned up at ten with a bottle of Australian red in his hands and sporting his favourite leather jacket. His mam had insisted on the wine, but she hadn’t talked him into the paisley shirt Cerys had bought him for his birthday. While Cerys had decent taste, she seemed to want to bring out his inner indie kid, and he had no interest in wearing skinny jeans and a bowler hat.

Jason felt unaccountably nervous when he rang the doorbell. They were just students and they were older than Cerys, growing out of that compulsive need to be edgy and different all the damn time. But they still thought themselves cool and independent, so he’d already decided to keep quiet about the fact that he lived with his mother and worked as a minimum-wage cleaner. In a year or two, these kids would be lawyers and teachers—he wouldn’t let them think that they were smarter than him.

He was buzzed straight up and he pushed open the door, stepping into a grubby hallway with flaking plaster and the same ugly terracotta tile that seemed to be universal in all student houses in Cardiff. Jason shut the door behind him and took the stairs two at a time until he got to the second floor and flat 9C.

The door was open and the sound of poorly played Guitar Hero carried into the corridor. He knocked gently on the door as he stepped in, to see Teresa on the sofa with John, as Ryan murdered the lead guitar on “Killer Queen.”

Teresa jumped up to greet him, took the bottle out of his hand and went over to the tiny kitchen area in the living room. “So glad you could make it.” She poured two generous glasses for them before pressing one into his hand.

“I’m glad you invited me.”

Teresa giggled, clinking her glass against his. She took his hand and led him to the sofa, from which John had tactfully moved to instruct Ryan in the finer points of wielding his digital guitar.

“Busy day?” Teresa said, taking social refuge in idle chitchat.

“Sunday lunch with my mam and sister. Nothing much.”

“So you’re a local boy then,” Teresa said knowingly.

Jason tensed, suddenly feeling defensive. He hated the way out-of-towners did that, looked down on you for sticking with your roots and your family. Sure, people could go away to uni or move to other parts, but there was nothing wrong with staying in town or coming home again. It didn’t make you dependent or fragile—it just made sense to him.

“Born and raised” was what he said, plastering on a smile. “My dad was from Liverpool.”

Teresa made an interested noise and Jason plastered on a polite smile, regretting coming to this thing at all. These weren’t his people, not really, and he had been stupid to think this was a good place to be just because a pretty girl had made him a cup of tea.

“I don’t go home much,” Teresa said. “My parents live in Oxford, but I’ve never been a homebird. When my brother goes to uni next year, they’ll be lost.”

Now it was Jason’s turn to nod appropriately, but he was saved from death by small talk when the doorbell rang. John buzzed the guest up and soon the tiny flat was filled with a gang of boys and girls, bearing party food and drinks. He lost Teresa in the crowd but made his way to the food, where a young woman was carefully arranging cupcakes with white icing and silver baubles on top.

“They’re pretty. Did you make them?”

The girl turned and shyly held one out to him. “No. I mean, yes, I did, but at work. We get to take home the leftovers.”

“You work at a bakery?” Jason took the proffered cake, wondering why that sounded familiar. Was there something in the case about a bakery?

“Just a small one in town. I...uh...I worked with Mel there.”

Of course, Teresa had mentioned Melody had been out with folk from the bakery. Maybe this girl, even... “It must be sad, not seeing her there.”

“It was funny, ’cause she’d only been there a few weeks, but we hit it off, y’know? I’d come round and we’d chat and have coffee. That’s how I got to know Teresa and the boys.”

Just then, Jason’s phone buzzed and he fished it out of his jeans pocket. A text from Amy: “
woman @ uhw id down 2 7. easy. @
” He frowned at it, trying to make sense of the numbers. What did “2 7” mean?

“Sorry about that.” But when he looked up, the girl was gone, having ditched him for more attentive company. Jason hid his scowl. How was he meant to investigate if the woman he was gathering intel for kept distracting him via text? The life of a modern detective was difficult. Sherlock Holmes never had to deal with this shit.

He sipped the red vinegar in his glass and scanned the room for people to talk with. These kids looked like they were sixteen—he wasn’t that old, was he? A few excited yells from the direction of the TV drew his attention, and Jason decided to play to his strengths and head for the games console.

After watching a couple of average performances, he stepped up and angled for the plastic axe. John gave it up to him with a shrug and Jason secured the strap over his shoulder. “You played before?” Ryan asked him.

“A few times.”

Three minutes later, with a new high score on “Iron Man,” Jason was kicking back in the kitchen, celebratory beer in hand.

“You’ve got to show me how to do that,” Ryan said eagerly, and Jason told him confidently it was all about rhythm when really it was more about hours in your mate’s garage between motors.

The boys weren’t so keen to talk about Melody and it was several minutes of conversation about their courses and Dylan’s garage before John brought up Teresa’s move. “She said she wanted to get away,” he said, without complaint or anger. “I get it, I do—that house is too full of Mel. I don’t know if we’ll stay long.”

“I don’t think we’ll get anyone to live there, to be honest. The landlord’s thinking about selling the place but he won’t get much for it. Even though she didn’t...” Ryan trailed off, realising just what he was about to say. “It’s not the same as that Kate girl,” he said instead and everyone knew what he meant. There may not have been a dead body in the house, but it still held the curse.

“I wish we knew where she was,” John said feelingly. “She didn’t like to be cold. I hope she isn’t somewhere cold.”

It didn’t make sense, and yet Jason felt that it did, that there had been a great deal of affection between them and they cared about her resting place. He felt like an intruder at a wake.

“How long had you lived together?” he asked.

Ryan started counting on his fingers. “It was September last, so...fourteen months? But she’d been in halls with Teresa before that, and we lived in the flat below, so we’d known her over two years really.”

“Were you two...?” Jason left the implication hanging, and John laughed it off.

“Melody wouldn’t give him the time of day. Besides, she wasn’t one to be tied down. A free spirit, our Mel.”

“What are you three talking about?” Teresa said, coming back for more wine. “You’re having a good time, right?”

“The best, Terry.” John raised his beer. “Your man Jason’s an ace at Guitar Hero.”

This time, she didn’t deny he was “her man” and Jason thought that might mean something, though he wasn’t entirely sure what. “I’m not that good,” he deflected modestly, and suffered a minute of Ryan’s enthusiastic praise.

Eventually, Teresa saved him. “Come on, Jason, I’ll give you the tour.”

Jason caught Ryan and John’s exchanged looks as Teresa dragged him off—the girl’s friends obviously had more clue what she was up to than he did.

“So, you’ve seen the living room-kitchen combo. The bathroom is tiny. In fact, there’s not even a bath, so that makes it a shower room, right?” She opened the door to said cupboard-like room, then shut it again. “At the end of the corridor, there’s a storage closet and then this is my room.”

She led him by the hand into her bedroom. The walls were white, the carpet cream, but she’d hung pictures on the walls, prints of water lilies by that famous artist bloke and a poster of a cat hanging off a tree branch. When she closed the door behind them, Jason realised he’d been extremely stupid and, when she kissed him, everything fell into place.

She was drunk but enthusiastic, and he let her kiss him for a minute before pulling away. “Won’t your friends notice you’re gone?”

Teresa waved off his objections. “They won’t mind. It’s busy in there—they won’t even notice.”

It seemed a reasonable argument to him and, in the face of overwhelming logic and a woman pulling him towards her bed, Jason found himself powerless to resist.